The sea is one of the largest unexploited sources of renewable energy on the planet: ENEA and RSE have calculated that if the energy produced by oceans (waves, tides, salinity and thermal gradient) could be fully harnessed, we could obtain as many as 80,000 TWh of energy, around five times the entire world’s annual electricity demand. Other estimates put this figure as high as 130,000 TWh. According to the most conservative estimates, the wave component alone is thought to be about 2 TW globally, equivalent to about 18,000 TWh per year, or almost the entire planet's annual electricity demand. Our ISWEC (Inertial Sea Wave Energy Converter) system does exactly that: it converts the energy of ocean waves into electrical energy, making it immediately available for offshore plants or feeding it directly into the electricity grid to provide power to coastal communities and small islands. ISWEC was developed together with Wave for Energy S.r.l., a spin-off of the Politecnico di Torino. The system consists of a sealed floating hull containing a pair of gyroscopic systems connected to two generators. Gyroscopes are large, constantly rotating flywheels that tend to keep their rotational axis fixed by generating a force perpendicular to the axis in order to counter external forces that tend to change it. The phenomenon is known as gyroscopic precession. The waves cause the unit to pitch; it is anchored to the ocean floor, but it is free to move and oscillate. The hull's pitching movement is intercepted by the two gyroscopic systems: they are connected to just as many generators that produce electric energy. It is a simple solution, with cutting-edge technology at its heart.
Products and Services

